Robert Naylor, Chief Executive of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) indicated that the ICO was notified by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust (BSUH) that the flash drive had been left plugged into a computer in a training room at a BSUH Hospital in October 2010. The drive was the personal property of a doctor employed at BSUH who was conducting research at UCLH.
The device contained urology images, patient diagnosis and a spreadsheet indexing 750 UCLH patients.
The doctor had been given access to UCLH clinical systems by a UCLH employee supervising their MSc course. While access to patient information was provided to facilitate academic studies, sensitive personal data should not have been removed from UCLH systems on an unencrypted and unapproved portable device.
As a result of this incident, the trust will ensure that education supervisors are properly trained and supervise others to ensure that data protection principles, including the need for encryption, are adhered to.